This is my first time planting tomatoes and I noticed that most of my tomatoes are ripening far too early. I have watered it almost consistently and recently placed some fertilizer of unknown origin, I just know that it’s for roots and trunk type of fertilizer. Anyone have any ideas? I plant it in black soil and it’s inside a small polystyrene box. I covered the top soil with wood shavings to prevent grass growth.
by max301
7 Comments
Too early? What is too early?
Are they a little bit soft and totally yummy , or are they hard and falling off on their own?
ok so they are not ripening early, they are not getting big enough due to low potassium, you have to tell us what you are feeding and how much
Do you know that temperatures above 30°C (86°F) speed up ripening hormones? Can you tell why two plants of the same type are growing differently?
https://preview.redd.it/0mzo5y6ewjlg1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=715ecd2ee45293f8865cbceedc2569f6a21da475
What cultivar is this?
They turn ripe when they are ready.
They are the small size because that’s the variety of tomato. They are not going to get larger as they grow.
If you want large tomatoes you need to buy seeds or a plant that makes large tomatoes.
It’s a feature not a bug
>I plant this one from a grocery store tomato
This is one issue that you can’t fix. Commercially produced tomatoes are generally the first-generation children of crossbreeding (F1 hybrids). If you plant these seeds, you get second generation (F2) hybrids, which by nature will have different random genes from its ancestors activated. This is called not growing true-to-type. If you want true-to-type genes from seeds (where every generation is almost the same), you’ll want to plant open-pollinated and heirloom varieties.
I do see that there’s a larger tomato in the back, so this plant is producing smaller fruit than optimal. Growing the largest tomatoes possible means you have to keep the plant as happy as possible. Happy plant with everything it needs = lots of big fruit, less happy plant = fewer and smaller fruit. Requirements are EVERYTHING a tomato plant needs, like optimum nutrition, water, light, temperature, sleep, oxygen, carbon dioxide… lots of things at the correct timing that commercial growers try to master to maximize profit. The right genes are required, too. Even commercial growers will often cut their flower trusses to limit the number of fruit per truss so that the fruit sizes can be larger.
So just try keeping the plant as happy as possible. It’s obviously happy enough to fruit a little, and that by itself says you put a lot of effort into your plant (so great job!). Optimizing is a years-long process of learning. You mentioned that you put a trunk/root fertilizer in there, so nutrition might not be a very good ratio. That might be a good place to start troubleshooting, but don’t buy anything yet — give it a few weeks and see if things aren’t getting much better. Another thing that might be an issue, though it’s hard to tell from just a picture, is that the roots might not have a lot of space because it’s sharing the container with other plants. Tomato roots want to become bigger than a big human head over time so that they can suck a ton of water and nutrients every day. Usually, 10+ gallons of soil per tomato plant is recommended to make things easier on the plant and the gardener.